She left the car in the deserted car park next to the castle and walked into town. In the street with the clock in the arch of the town wall – yet another clock – she found a hairdresser’s. It was between the doctor’s and the chemist’s; she hadn’t noticed it last time. If it hadn’t been 27 November, if this had been a normal stay, she would have enjoyed this: walking straight to a hairdresser’s in a foreign town as if nothing in the world could be more natural, as if she came here every month to have her hair done. Now the sun’s reflection on the large window was too bright for her eyes, the bread was weighing on her stomach like concrete and she felt on the point of surrender, as if she were delivering herself up to a torturer with gentle hands. And she hadn’t even gone in yet.
There was just one other customer, the doctor. He was sitting there smoking. A second cigarette was smouldering in the ashtray next to the mirror.
‘Hello, love,’ the hairdresser said. ‘Sit yourself down. I’ll just finish off this gentleman. I’m almost done.’
‘Ah, the badger lady,’ said the doctor. Everything above the cobalt-blue hairdressing cape looked like a newly hatched chick. He studied her in the mirror.
‘What’s that?’ the hairdresser asked.
‘The badger lady. A badger bit her on the foot.’
‘No! That’s impossible.’
‘That’s what I said, but it did.’
‘How?’
‘Lying down on a big rock with bare feet.’
‘Really?’
‘Yep.’
The hairdresser stopped working, standing with her comb hand and scissor hand poised in mid-air. ‘I only ever see dead badgers. On the side of the road.’ She reached out to the ashtray and sucked so hard on her cigarette that the tendons in her neck stood out. She used her other hand to wave away the smoke she exhaled.
‘Me too. They’re stupid animals. They think they own the night. That’s why they never look out.’
‘Is that it, do you think?’
‘I don’t know. I’ve lived here my whole life and I’ve never seen a live badger. Maybe you should ask the Dutchwoman.’
Now the doctor and the hairdresser both looked at her in the mirror. The small salon was thick with smoke. Fortunately she’d already picked a magazine up off the coffee table, stunned as she was at being discussed like this, and began leafing through it randomly. Nobody actually asked her anything, so she didn’t need to answer. She tried to concentrate on an article about how to arrange pumpkins on a porch while the doctor went into detail about his patients’ complaints. He had a strange way of addressing the hairdresser as an equal, as if they were two middle-aged women who had known each other for decades, two friends discussing everyday life. Cackling back at him every now and then, the hairdresser snipped away until the moment she whipped the cape off his shoulders and called out, ‘Done!’ The doctor got up out of the chair and thanked her. The hairdresser showed no sign of moving towards the till.
Standing in front of her, the doctor lit a cigarette. ‘You coming by again?’ he asked.
‘Why?’ she said.
‘So I can check the wound. Among other things.’
‘I don’t think that’s necessary.’ She kept her eyes stubbornly fixed on a photo of an enormous green pumpkin.
‘Whatever you think best,’ the doctor said. ‘Whatever you think best.’ He left.
‘Come and sit over here,’ said the hairdresser. ‘Then we’ll start by giving your hair a nice wash.’
*
The hairdresser kneaded and stroked. Her hands were soft. The water was exactly the right temperature, the shampoo smelt very pleasant. As far as she was concerned, they could postpone the cutting for a while.
‘How would you like it?’ the hairdresser asked. ‘A trim?’
‘Short, please. Easy.’
‘The badger. Was that really true?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘And badgers come out in the daytime too.’ They said nothing more during the wash. When it was finished, she thought she could smell Mrs Evans again, despite the shampoo. She looked at herself in the mirror – hair gone from around her neck, face pale, eyes dark – and knew that she was going to ask for something she had never asked for before. ‘Could you perhaps turn me round?’
‘What?’
‘Turn me round. The chair.’
‘But why?’
‘Because I…’ She didn’t know how to explain it.
‘You won’t be able to see what I’m doing.’
‘I’m confident you’ll do a good job. I like surprises.’
‘This is a new one on me,’ the hairdresser said, turning the chair with her foot. ‘I can’t see what I’m doing properly now either.’ She tapped a cigarette out of the packet and set the door ajar, after first opening it all the way and looking left and right down the street. Then she laid the burning cigarette on the ashtray. ‘Is this a Dutch custom?’ she asked.
‘No.’
‘Well, here we go then.’ A quarter of an hour later she was finished. No new customers had come in. The hairdresser used a dryer to dry the gel she had rubbed into her hair and pulled it into shape with rough tugs. The cigarette had burnt down unsmoked.
She got up without turning to face the mirror and walked over to the small counter with the till on it.
‘Don’t you want to look?’
‘No. I really do want it to be a surprise.’
The hairdresser stared at her and opened her mouth, perhaps to ask if that was another Dutch custom.
‘I like surprises,’ she said.
Deeply insulted, the hairdresser closed her mouth and typed an amount on the old-fashioned cash register, which rang loudly.
She paid, said a friendly goodbye and walked out of the salon, leaving the door slightly ajar. A little way down the street she glanced back and saw the hairdresser standing outside her shop, one arm crossed under her breasts with the hand tucked in her armpit, a cigarette in the other hand, staring fixedly at the perfumery across the road, her bleached hair thin in the slowly rising cloud of sunlit cigarette smoke. She kept a grip on herself through the narrow streets and the car park, even though there was hardly anyone around. It was only when she was sitting in the car and saw herself looking like a startled animal in the rear-view mirror that she began to cry.
25
She inspected the wood supply in the pigsty, looking and counting, and decided not to light fires in more than one room at a time. Then there’d be enough. And if she did run out, she could always sit in the kitchen near the cooker.
The sun was shining again and the smoke from her cigarette rose straight up, just like the hairdresser’s yesterday. She leant against the light-coloured wall of the sty and felt its warmth on her back through her nightie, but her neck was cold to touch. Her head was light, as if kilos of hair had been cut off. She smoked with her eyes shut.
Here she was, without a single appointment, without a single obligation. She thought of the geese and the cord strung along the path and remembered one commitment she had made – to buy bread from the baker in Waunfawr – then felt like everything was too much. She threw the cigarette onto the lawn and went into the house, wiping her bare feet off on the mat to get rid of the slate grit. She dressed, put a towel in the rucksack and went for a walk.
*
On her own path. Across the stream and through the oiled kissing gates and the small wood of ancient trees, where the path grew clearer each time she used it. Song from birds she couldn’t identify and had never known; a squirrel. She walked straight through the stone circle and onto the embankment through the marshy ground. The map was back home on the kitchen table. Past the boggy section, she came to a steel gate with long-haired, big-horned black cattle on the other side. A stile next to the gate. She’d have to cross the field. She didn’t hesitate, but climbed over, paying no attention to the cattle. If I pretend they don’t exist, they won’t notice me either, she thought. The path seemed to follow a wooded bank. If necessary, s
he could crawl into the thick undergrowth for safety. The countryside kept undulating and when she looked back after fifty steps, she didn’t recognise a thing. She was lucky: the frame of what had once been a kissing gate showed that she had taken the right direction. She left the black cattle behind her. In front of her the land sloped down; she could see the water.
The trees here were almost completely leafless, the grass yellow and grazed close to the ground, here and there a clump of thistles. On the bank was an upright stone, the kind they called standing stones on the map, but this one looked like the work of a farmer with heavy machinery. Walking around the large pond, she saw concrete banks and a small brick building; inside, she could hear water flowing but couldn’t see where it came out. That confirmed her idea that the pond was man-made, some kind of reservoir. An asphalt road came to a dead end behind the building. The water before her was so smooth and motionless it made her think of a freshly polished silver tray. It was clear and viscous, but didn’t look cold. She undressed next to a big rock she could lay her clothes on, then broke the water by dipping the foot with the scar into it. It was cold, but not cold enough to put her off. The bottom felt rock hard under a thin layer of mud, like an enormous concrete slab that had been cleaned fairly recently. Walking as slowly as possible, she waded out to the middle where – with the water up to her waist – she stayed until the last ripple had died away and it was smooth again. She could see her toes and her knees, minuscule air bubbles on each pubic hair, a strange refraction of the light at her belly and forearms, as if the lower body belonged to someone else and didn’t fit properly. She looked around and, yes, this bank too had neither a beginning nor an end. Like a circle. Maybe she didn’t feel cold because, without the slightest breath of wind, even the weak sun was able to warm her upper body, and because she continued to think of the water as viscous, slow and heavy. She remained standing there and understood perfectly why her uncle had been so indecisive in that hotel pond: the place itself had robbed him of the ability to decide. It was only when she saw goosebumps appearing around her nipples that she waded back to the bank. She had seen time passing in the rotation of the long shadows of the trees, the arrival of a school of tiny fish at her toes and their departure, and the appearance of five sheep next to the standing stone. Was this it, what Emily Dickinson had done for almost her entire adult life? Had she tried to hold back time, making it bearable and less lonely too perhaps, by capturing it in hundreds of poems? And not just TIME but also LOVE and LIFE and even NATURE. It doesn’t matter, she thought. It’s not important any more, and anyway, those sections weren’t even Dickinson’s idea. She dried herself and put her clothes back on, walking away from the water long before the last ripples had died down.
*
The black cattle were gone, or at least no longer visible from the path along the wooded bank. On the embankment, it occurred to her that this path must have been well used at some stage, otherwise they wouldn’t have put up the signs with the hiker or added kissing gates and stiles. No matter how natural she found its current state of abandonment, walkers must pass by occasionally. Maybe they already had: when she was getting her hair done or shopping at Tesco’s or lying on the divan. She smoked a cigarette on the largest rock in the stone circle and sat waiting until the badger – she always assumed it was the same one, the ‘male’ that had bitten her foot – appeared under the gorse. As before, it looked at her without giving any sign of wanting to leave its hiding place. Maybe it remembered the branch breaking on its back.
26
After docking at Hull she had visited four different cashpoints with both her credit card and her normal bank card and withdrawn a large amount of money. She was still nauseous – the night boat had pitched and rolled and she had felt so miserable she had resolved never again to travel on such a huge ship – but clear-headed enough to realise that transactions could be traced and know that was something she didn’t want. She started driving, sticking to main roads. Bradford, Manchester, Chester. She was thinking of Ireland. At a Little Chef she had to pull the tarpaulin tighter over the stuff she had in the trailer. ‘Stuff’, that was how she thought of it. The single mattress, the coffee table, things she’d bundled together. Even before she reached Wales, Holyhead appeared on the signs, straight ahead on the A55. She filled up the car and paid with her credit card before she realised what she was doing. In Bangor it finally stopped raining and when she drove onto the Britannia Bridge for Anglesey, she remembered the crossing. No, not another nightmare like that. The strait between the mainland and Anglesey looked magnificent in the damp sun: the steep wooded shores, the two old bridges, big white birds in briny mud, a small island with a white cottage. She turned back and went looking for a bed and breakfast. The next day she ended up at the estate agent’s run by Rhys Jones’s ‘friend’, who said he had the perfect house for her, almost fully furnished and available to rent quarterly. A grey-stone Welsh farmhouse. They went to have a look in his car. He gave her a tour, pointing out the shed with a throwaway gesture and saying ‘pigsty’. After a second night in the B&B, she moved in. He hadn’t mentioned the geese and she hadn’t noticed them. Rhys Jones’s sheep arrived later. She paid until 31 December and still had more than enough money.
*
She was wheeling half-loads of slate from the mound to the path very calmly. Every time she rounded the corner of the house with the empty wheelbarrow, the five geese cackled quietly. She could hardly bear it and started shovelling faster and faster to cover the sound. After a few loads she was only quarter filling the wheelbarrow. She had removed the cord and the bamboo posts and tipped the grit between the thick alder branches, using the rusty pitchfork to spread it. When she was finished, she slid a kitchen chair up to the cooker, drank a glass of milk, ate a sandwich, smoked a cigarette and thought that, if she really wanted to feel like a gardener, she should start smoking roll-ups. In the afternoon she used a knife to dig weeds out of the slate grit while kneeling on the doormat. She slid slowly from the corner near the pigsty to the corner with the bamboo and the oil tank and carried on all the way to the stream, where she laid the doormat – which said WELCOME – down as a cushion. While working, she didn’t think consciously, all kinds of things just flitted through her mind. Now she sat with her legs dangling down the steep bank and stared at the fast-flowing stream, which fell quickly here. Growing on the steep bank opposite, little more than a metre away, were various kinds of ferns and many other plants she didn’t know by name. At some point a tree had fallen and come to rest across the stream like a mossy bridge. She found it difficult to tear herself away from the water; its rushing and bubbling were hypnotic, never-ending. Did this stream rise on the mountain?
*
That night she stared at the fire just as she had stared at the water. She had lit candles and put them on the windowsill. Nagging pain in her back. Before getting into the bath, she had eaten some bread with cheese and a sweet onion. Hot meals were too much trouble. Fruit and vegetables were healthy but, of course, things like that only applied to people who were healthy. She’d always found meat difficult. What, for Christ’s sake, was she going to do with the lamb Rhys Jones had threatened her with? She had thought about it while lying in the hot water, and about the garden. Despite failing to produce a sketch, she had already laid out paths in her imagination: the flower beds were in bloom and she had even built the rose arch. Now she stared at the fire without really seeing it. She had warmth, she had light. With cushions, the divan was a fine place to lie down. She hadn’t dressed again after her bath and had a soft blanket draped over her. A glass of wine on the coffee table next to The Wind in the Willows and the unread books.
There was a sweet and spicy quality to the smell of the burning wood that made her think of the home-made borstplaat and speculaas her grandmother used to make and bring to their flat in the Rustenburgerstraat; her grandparents themselves; the pounding on the door when St Nicholas left a sack of presents; looking out through the misted win
dow at the street – preferably in bad weather – and always amazed to see people walking there, with any luck catching a glimpse of a Black Peter on a bicycle; knowing that it was cold and wet outside and warm inside; chocolate milk and presents; the rustle and special smell of the wrapping paper; the laughter of grown-ups in a dimly lit living room; checking her own wish list, sometimes with a pencil to cross off the presents she’d received; knowing that it would all be over the moment the fluorescent light in the kitchen flickered and turned on; the thumping on the stairs once she was in bed; the empty feeling of 6 December. That homesickness kept coming back. Maybe there was another word for it, maybe nostalgia was better. It had more to do with a time than a place.
*
The geese started to honk loudly. I need a stereo, she thought, struggling to her feet. She hurried downstairs, flicked on the outside light and ran down the path next to the house. ‘Hey!’ she shouted. ‘Fuck off!’ She grabbed a handful of crushed slate and threw it in the direction of the goose field, which was engulfed in darkness. ‘Go away! Go away!’ Another handful of slate. ‘Hey!’ A single stone rolled out of her hand, but the stream drowned the sound of its falling. The geese were quiet. She sank to her knees and looked up at the sky. Never before had she seen so many stars. Never before had she looked up at them naked on her knees in late November.
December
27
Tidying up the garage, the husband dropped a cardboard box on his foot. The box contained books and papers belonging to his wife. Academic year 2003–2004 was written on the side. He was trying to push it up onto a high shelf when a piece of tape came loose and he lost his grip. The box hit him on the chest and landed corner-first on his left foot. He was wearing flip-flops. He made it through the day – it was Sunday 6 December – by going easy on his foot and calling off the tidy-up, spending the whole afternoon in front of the TV with a glass of red wine: sport and more bloody sport. The next morning his foot was swollen blue and yellow, so swollen the smallest toes were no longer recognisable as separate digits. After looking up the number in his address book, he phoned their GP. They were able to fit him in straight away, but he had to look up the address on the Internet first. He pulled on running shoes without doing up the laces and tried to avoid changing gear as much as possible; depressing the clutch was torture. He wouldn’t be training any time soon. It was no problem to keep the car in third as the route from home to the practice was all within his own neighbourhood. On the way he called work, playing it safe by telling them he was worried it might take all day. He found it hard to believe it wasn’t broken.
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